News

Gary Glitter - mad, bad or just dangerous to know?

Gary Glitter is a most unlikely martyr. With his white goatee, hinting at shameless, perverted goatishness, he has been convicted of some revolting paedophile crimes, both here and abroad, including the sexual assault of two little girls in Vietnam.

The details the tabloids have luxuriated in are loathsome and even if the motives of the home secretary - in hastily proposing a populist "Glitter law" to restrict sex offenders' travel - are not disinterested, there is nothing wrong with her suggestion. Child abusers should be restrained. Few people can doubt that Glitter should be put on the sex offenders' register for the rest of his life and closely watched, or that other countries are entitled to keep him out.

All the same, Glitter is suffering media martyrdom far beyond his deserts; he is a latterday St Sebastian, lashed to the post of public contempt and pierced again and again with the furious